To Be Done with the Possible, To No Longer Possibilate: Considering the Masochist as the Figure of Exhaustion

Abstract

In Coldness and Cruelty, Deleuze remarks that masochism may be reflected on from three perspectives: as a pleasure–pain alliance, as an enactment of humiliation and slavery, and as a consideration of the enslavement of contractual relations. Later Deleuze and Guattari consider masochism in terms of an ontology of desire – in terms of virtuality rather than extensity. I argue that while the actualisation of pain might be considered secondary, and is oftentimes portrayed as incidental in popular depictions, it also constitutes the exhaustive/exhausted and refrain functions of masochism so that the masochist might be thought of as the figure of exhaustion.